a regular gal attempting to keep it interesting

Tag: Office

Over the years I’ve had a lot of interaction with Microsoft Access. I’ve certainly entered a ton of data when I first started out and generated pre-made reports. However, it wasn’t until now that I really dove into the program to the point where I could create my own database from scratch and query my own information. To learn more about Access, I signed up for a series of free courses offered by my employer. If your employer offers these kind of services, I highly recommend you take advantage of them! If they don’t offer it, there are a lot of online options and Access For Dummies is a big help too.

For those of you who don’t think you need to know how to use Access, ask yourself the following…

Do you have large amounts of data?
Do you have no data?
Do you need to know specific things about the data you collect?
Do you need to save time and money?
Do you have multiple people who need access to the information you collect?
Do you create monthly reports using Excel?
Do you want a good resume builder?

Clearly I’m a right-brained, visual type of person. I like analyzing data and I consider myself a strategic thinker, but I like to look at it in a shiny graphical format, not globs of numbers in spreadsheets that blur together over time. I’ve wasted a lot of time in past positions entering data in Excel and then using that as a reference for some horrible Word Smart Art. Eventually I graduated to Pivot Tables and Pivot Charts (still very helpful) but nothing compares to Access in the Office family when it comes to collecting data and pulling information. I shied away from Access for a few years, simply because I assumed it was for more advanced data people…and because someone else was already taking care of that piece for me.

I’m still somewhat of a beginner when it comes to Access, but I’m proud to say I learned (a big) something knew already in 2014. It’s so easy to fall behind with technology and even though I don’t work in data analytics or IT, I feel as a marketer that I need to know this stuff and keep up. I’ve been lucky to have IT and data people around me to assist throughout my career, but I know I can make all of our lives easier with this knowledge. It’s never too late to learn and I can’t see how it wouldn’t be useful to anyone!